The United States currently has the world's largest postal system, which handles billions of pieces of mail each year. The servicing of mail delivery involves three general steps: collection, sorting, and delivery. Collection takes place through a series of local post office facilities and Bulk Mail Entry Units (BMEU) spread throughout the United States. The mail is then sent from local post offices or BMEUs to central facilities known as sectional centers. At the sectional centers, high speed automated equipment sorts the large volumes of mail based on the destination post office or zip code for delivery.
Recently, the postal system has been used as a weapon of terror and fear by the inclusion of harmful chemical or biological contaminants, such as, for example, the spore-forming bacterium Bacillus anthracis (anthrax), within or on a mail piece. Such contaminants can be carried in several forms, including for example, a powder form. The harmful effects of only a few contaminated mail pieces can be far reaching, as cross-contamination of other mail pieces can easily occur when the mail pieces come in contact with each other or are passed through the same machines during sorting. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that tens of thousands of mail pieces could have become cross-contaminated from only two contaminated mail pieces.
Ideally, it would be desirous for the postal authority to examine and/or test each piece of mail individually for any possible contaminants or harmful materials before it enters the mail system, thereby isolating any contaminated mail pieces and preventing any cross-contamination. With the large volume of mail processed daily, however, such an approach is not feasible due to the time and cost that such an undertaking would entail.
Another approach that can deter the inclusion of harmful materials within a mail piece would be the ability to accurately identify the origin of such a mail piece. Criminals that utilize the mail system to send hazardous materials rely on the anonymity of the mail system to avoid identification and capture. If the origin of a mail piece could be accurately identified, the anonymity of sending a letter via a postal service is removed, thereby allowing identification and prosecution of those people that commit such terrorist acts. While metered mail can be traced back to its originator, problems still exist in an environment in which mail is collected from multiple sources before being provided to a carrier for delivery. Such environments include, for example, the mail room of a corporation or business, or a mail room shared by multiple businesses within the same building (hereinafter referred to collectively as “corporate mail rooms” or “central mail rooms”). Corporate mail rooms handle a variety of items ranging from single letters to large mailings to parcels. Typically, mail pieces and parcels produced throughout a corporation or other business are placed at pick-up points for collection and delivery to a central or corporate mail room. At several times throughout the day the items from the various pick-up points are collected and brought to the central or corporate mail room for election of an appropriate carrier, application of postage, etc. The items are then provided to the appropriate carrier for delivery to the intended recipients.
While the use of a postage meter, such as, for example, a DM Series™ Mailing System manufactured by Pitney Bowes Inc., to generate and print an indicium evidencing payment of postage for each mail piece would allow each mail piece to be traced back to the corporation or business, it would not allow the specific individual that generated the mail piece to be identified. This presents problems, especially in an environment in which mail is aggregated for the purpose of application of postage and forwarding to a carrier such as a corporate mail room as described above. For example, the pick-up points within a corporation or business may not be a secure area, i.e., access to such an area may not be limited to only employees. Other people, such as, for example, contract workers, cleaning crews, security personnel, and repair personnel, can have access to such pick-up points, as well as visitors. As a result, there can be no guarantee that the individual responsible for the mail piece was actually an employee of the corporation or business. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that an employee of a corporation or business will not try to commit criminal acts via the postal system while hiding behind the anonymity created from within the corporate environment. It is, therefore, possible that a criminal could send a mail piece tainted with contaminants or other harmful materials from within a corporate environment without the fear of being accurately identified and prosecuted. Thus, there is no mechanism for tracing a mail piece back to the person that originated the mail piece within the corporate mail room environment.
Another problem that arises within the context of a corporate mail room is identification of the actual originator of each mail piece for the purposes of accounting. Specifically, many corporations desire to charge the costs associated with mail pieces back to a cost center for the originator's department or business unit. This allows the corporation to account for all of its expenses related to the mail room, as well as track the amount of mail originating from each department or business unit. In addition, such charge backs can be a deterrent to employees sending personal mail at the corporation's expense.
While the use of return address labels or completed forms attached to each mail piece can be used to identify the originator of a mail piece, such methods are both time consuming and easily bypassed. For example, if a form is utilized, the form can be completed utilizing false information, such as another's name. Return address labels, pre-printed envelopes and the like can be lost, stolen or counterfeited, thereby removing any method of authenticating that the mail piece actually originated from the person identified in the return address.
Thus, there exists a need for a method and system that enables the accurate identification of the originator of a mail piece within a corporate mail room environment.